In The Unfinished Quest, TV Paul Charts India’s checkered path toward higher regional and global status, and sheds important light on its significance as the “swing power” that can mitigate China’s aggressive rise in the Indo-Pacific region. In 2022, India surpassed the United Kingdom, its former colonial ruler, as the fifth largest economy in the world. Since the 1990s, a series of US presidents and secretaries of state have all acclaimed India as a rising major power that deserves to be recognized as a lead actor in the international arena. All five permanent members of the UN Security Council except China have openly acknowledged the need to include India among their ranks. But even now, India has not attained the status of an internationally recognized great power.
In The Unfinished Quest, leading international relations and South Asia scholar T.V. Paul charts India’s checkered path toward higher regional and global status, covering both the successes and failures it has experienced since the modern nation’s founding in 1947. Paul focuses on the key motivations driving Indian leaders to enhance India’s global status and power, but also on the many constraints that have hindered its progress. He carefully specifies what counts as indicators of greater status and uses these as benchmarks in his assessment of each era. In this manner, he also brings forth some important insights on status competition and power transitions in the contemporary international system.
Paul’s analysis of India’s quest for status also sheds important light on the current geo-strategic situation and serves as a new framework for understanding the China–India rivalry, as well as India’s relative position in the broader Indo-Pacific theater. As the economies of China and India grow rapidly, the power balance between them will be determined by each country’s ability to develop the hard and soft powers needed to outpace the other and solidify their place in the international hierarchy. Whether India can be a “swing power” able to mitigate China’s aggressive rise depends on its relative power position in that theater and its own evolution as an inclusive, tolerant democracy that can develop and utilize its most prized asset, the demographic dividend. This sweeping account of India’s uneven rise in the global system will serve as the authoritative work on the subject.
T. V. Paul is Distinguished James McGill Professor in the Department of Political Science at McGill University, Montreal and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He served as the President of the International Studies Association (ISA) for 2016-17. He is also the Founding Director of the Global Research Network on Peaceful Change (GRENPEC). Paul is the author or editor of twenty-four books, co-editor of four special journal issues, and author of over eighty scholarly articles and book chapters in the fields of International Relations, International Security,a and South Asia. His books include Restraining Great Powers: Soft Balancing from Empires to the Global Era (Yale University Press, 2018); The Warrior State: Pakistan in the Contemporary World (Oxford University Press, 2013); Globalization and the National Security State (with Norrin M. Ripsman, Oxford University Press, 2010); The Tradition of Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons (Stanford University Press, 2009); and India in the World Order: Searching for Major- Power Status (with Baldev Raj Nayar, Cambridge University Press, 2002). He is the lead editor of The Oxford Handbook of Peaceful Change in International Relations (Oxford University Press, 2021). Paul currently serves as the editor of the Georgetown University Press book series, South Asia in World Affairs.
The following extract from the Introduction to the book has been taken with permission from the publishers.
In May 2020, in the high-altitude Himalayan mountains of Eastern Ladakh, several Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers appeared, placing their tents in the barren borderlands surrounding the Line of Actual Control (LAC) claimed by both India and China-an area that has rarely been encroached upon for more than three decades. Caught unawares for several weeks, the Indian Army finally responded by sending a patrol party in June that engaged in a hand-to-hand battle in the frigid Galwan Valley. Some 20 Indian and an undetermined number of Chinese soldiers died, the first casualties since 1967 involving the two Asian giants. Subsequently, both sides used firearms in a threatening manner, again a first after four decades of non-lethal patrolling activities. As the winter months approached, both sides set up more permanent fixtures for stationing their troops in a terrain where nighttime temperatures can fall to -50°C. On February 11, 2021, after many rounds of behind-the-scenes negotiations, both sides agreed to withdraw their troops to the pre-April 2020 positions, but the prospects for durable peace were not favorable, given that intrusions continued in 2022.1 In a near-repeat event on December 9, 2022, Chinese and Indian forces engaged in hand-to-hand combat involving sticks and iron rods in Tawang in the Northeastern section, injuring some 34 Indian and an undetermined number of Chinese soldiers.
A more prolonged, but non-lethal, confrontation took place in the Doklam tri-junction of the India-Bhutan-China border in the summer of 2017. It resulted from China's road construction there, which India resisted by intervening militarily in the disputed territories. The Chinese temporarily withdrew from the immediate encroachment areas after a 73-day-long standoff. Subsequently, China has claimed to have occupied a border village inside Bhutan and to have built housing there for Chinese nationals as well as an alternate all-weather road, bypassing Indian defenses at Doklam. These Chinese actions, presumably with the approval of the paramount leader Xi Jinping, surprised the Indian leadership, along with many international observers. The latest serious border incident occurred right in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic that began in Wuhan, China, and spread around the world, with India being the second most affected country after the United States. Was the 2020 incident simply a land grab opportunity, resulting from the Indian leadership's attention being deflected by the pandemic crisis as well as the weaknesses that the Indian economy had been facing following the national lockdown in April 2020? Or was it a response to an earlier Indian decision to remove the special autonomous constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir, which includes the Ladakh territory, and then make it a full constituent part of India? It is also reported that along with building more military infrastructure, Indian troops have been patrolling the disputed areas more frequently in the recent years, provoking China.
In this book, I contend that the upsurge in the Sino-Indian confrontation is only a manifestation of a larger contestation for international status that is playing out in the Indo-Pacific region. In this context, I define status as "collective international recognition of an actor based on its valued material and/or non-material attributes" The increasing tensions in bilateral relations are a direct result of status anxiety experienced by both sides vis- à-vis each other. The massive growth in the gross domestic product (GDP) of China has increased the Xi Jinping regime's apparent decision to bring back an "all under heaven" tributary model (Tianxia) of yesteryears to the Indo-Pacific and beyond. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), linking China with Asia, Africa, and Europe, is a clear manifestation of this policy, and is coupled with "wolf warrior diplomacy," which includes challenging borders with India, and the control of waters in the South China Sea, and East China Sea, as well as increased military pressures on Taiwan. Beijing's larger contestation is with the United States for dominance over the Pacific and the Indian Oceans, and eventually achieving global hegemony. Among all Asian states, the one power that has resisted joining the BRI or conceding to Chinese aggressive territorial moves is India. Could the sudden upsurge in territorial challenges by China not be due to any decline in Chinese security, but rather to put India, the presumably lower-ranking status challenger, in its place in China's hegemonic contestation?
India's status quest is a story of lost opportunities, mixed successes in the past three decades, and possible positive turning points for future enhancements due to some favorable geopolitical circumstances. Even though not on par with China's growth in aggregate economic numbers, the expansion of the Indian economy over the past three decades has been impressive. In September 2022, India became the fifth-largest world economy with $3.5 trillion GDP, replacing the United Kingdom, the former colonial ruler of India, whose economy dipped to $3.2 trillion. Over the past millennia India rose and expanded. eventually becoming a leading Asian civilization. It was then conquered by Islamic rulers and later by European colonial powers, most significantly the British, who made it the "jewel in the crown" of their empire-a region that supplied enormous amounts of wealth, manpower, and resources to Britain. India's successful independence struggle was largely nonviolent, elevating its status among other colonized societies and liberal-minded Westerners, enabling it to play a significant role as a third force in international politics. However, major conflicts with neighboring Pakistan and China somewhat upended its regional status aspirations. The timing of independence in 1947 did not work in India's favor in improving its status ranking in the postwar international order. More specifically, the UN Security Council in 1945 and the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1967 both precluded India as a ranking member with privileged positions similar to the five permanent (P-5) member states. However, the end of the Cold War and New Delhi's subsequent economic liberalization partially "uncaged the tiger," unleashing an era of economic growth and global activism. India's rise from the "Fallen People" status to the "rising power" category is an impressive yet partially fulfilled story. Along the way came China, India's larger Asian neighbor, whose status aspirations collided with India's in a larger contestation over the Indo-Pacific region. Increasingly, the international status quest has become part of the electoral politics in India, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) projecting Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the best option for enhancing India's image and status globally, while the opposition parties contest this position. Simultaneously, the BJP denigrated the Congress governments of the past for not improving India's status, especially in civilizational, religious, and nationalistic terms. Currently, India is aiming at becoming a "leading power," not just an "influential power"-in other words, the equivalent of a twenty-first century great power."
Today, India's status elevation is challenged more directly by a rising China, although the policies of other states in the South Asia region, as well as domestic and international factors, also constrain the full realization of its status ambitions. Looking first at the China challenge, the Sino-Indian rivalry is often discussed in terms of territorial conflict, ideology, power, and influence. However, the rivalry has evolved into a larger contestation for international and regional status, Status has been a source of conflict and cooperation between the two nations since their advent as fully independent states in the late 1940s, but it has worsened over the past decade since the arrival of Xi and Modi as leaders. China simply does not consider India as equal in status, while the Indian elite thinks they are equals. 10 Much of the Chinese propaganda has been to show that India is a weak, post-colonial state, overly tied to the United States today, and that it should assume a secondary role in the Asia-Pacific region while accepting China's primacy. India's reactions to the rise of China range from admiration to deep suspicion, as memories of defeat in the 1962 War and the ongoing territorial challenges add to the mix of status anxiety. In the decades ahead, this contest is likely to worsen, as the status ambitions of the two giant Asian states are unlikely to be reconciled. The widening mate- rial discrepancy between the two will potentially accentuate the status rivalry, with status anxiety worsening for India. The opposite (i.e., narrowing of the gap in material capabilities) could increase China's anxiety in this regard. New T Delhi's balancing efforts with the United States and Japan, if fully realized, could generate intense pressures for China to act in a hostile way toward India.
India's challenge to China's rise as a global power is multidimensional.
· India is a powerful "swing state," geographically located at the central point of contestation, the Indo-Pacific, and in the larger global competition between China and the United States. Its siding with the United States and its allies such as Japan and Australia can tilt the balance of power in the region, potentially upsetting China's claims and ambitions for regional and global dominance.
· In April 2023, India overtook China as the world's most populous country and thereby gained a demographic dividend of working-age population for a decade or more. The Indian economy is also poised to grow at a higher rate than China's for some time, and with sustained growth rates, it could reach close to China's economy by mid-century. However, India's status position is not institutionalized like China's as it is not a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and Beijing's lack of status accommodation of India will remain a sore point in their relations.
· The unsettled border with India and the Indian resistance, both on land and in the sea, challenge China's status as the emerging superpower, and could potentially drag PLA forces into a contest that will divert them from their central conflict with the United States.
· India's active opposition to the BRI and one of its key components, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) linking Xinjiang with the Arabian Sea, has hurt China's ambitions for a smooth dominance of the maritime space of the Indo-Pacific and beyond. Moreover, if the India- Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEEC), initiated on the sidelines at the 2023 Delhi G-20 meeting, becomes a credible competitor to the BRI, China's expected status boost in the Global South countries could erode.
· India's economic growth in the post-pandemic era could return to a level that upsets China's goal of reaching a hegemonic position in the Indo-Pacific region and wean away many of the smaller Asian states that China has managed to co-opt, via a deft infrastructure and debt strategy, into economic dependency relationships. A more powerful India would give such states more strategic autonomy as they can seek India's assistance simultaneously. Some, such as Sri Lanka, have fallen into a "debt trap" partially due to involvement with China's infrastructure projects. They face massive social and economic challenges and are seeking more aid from India.
· India's strategic relationships with Japan, Australia, and Southeast Asian countries, as well as regional states in Africa and the Middle East where India has traditional strengths, could upset the Chinese elite's dreams of re-emergence of a Tianxia world. India is increasingly aiming at reasserting its Global South leadership role, in addition to the balancing role it hopes to play in great power contestation.
· Both India and China are led by ambitious leaders claiming historical primacy in Asia, with their millennia-strong civilizational legacies and powerful presence in the world economic scene before the arrival of the European colonial powers in the eighteenth century. However, high levels of misperceptions and cognitive biases exist in each other's opinions of their civilizational value and historical significance.
· Global events such as Russia's sudden attack on Ukraine in February 2022 have affected India's status quest as India attempted its multi- alignment strategy of maintaining good relations with all great powers, especially its principal arms supplier, Russia. It does not want to push Moscow into forming a coalition with China and Pakistan, an outcome that would negatively affect India's security and status ambition.
T.V. Paul The Unfinished Quest: India’s Search for Major Power Status From Nehru to Modi Context, an imprint of Westland Books, a division of Nasadiya Technologies Private Limited, 2024. Hb. Pp. 364. Rs 699.
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